HP Forum Archive 19

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HP classic latches Message #1 Posted by Tim on 18 July 2009, 11:58 p.m. Does any on know where to get a latch for the HP 45 door?

Re: HP classic latches Message #2 Posted by Dan W on 19 July 2009, 1:30 a.m., in response to message #1 by Tim From an HP45? No I'm serious. Spare doors or latches for the Classics seem hard to come by. I could use a few myself. Best bet is to probably wait until a non-functional Classic shows up on auction and try to buy the whole thing for cheap. The 35, 45, 55, and 80 all use the same door (the 70 is the wrong color). There's a door thief out there, probably related to the sock thief. Edited: 19 July 2009, 1:32 a.m. after one or more responses were posted

Re: HP classic latches Message #3 Posted by Tim on 19 July 2009, 3:07 p.m., in response to message #2 by Dan W That's just it. They are not cheap. I have an HP 45 it has one latch that is broken in half. Most fixit calculators are missing the door. I thought maybe veteran collectos would have spare latches but they probably fixed up thiers and thus their is a short supply of them.

Re: HP classic latches Message #4 Posted by Michael de Estrada on 19 July 2009, 8:36 p.m., in response to message #2 by Dan W The HP-55 is also a different color, sort of a khaki green. Although I have on occasion seen classic battery doors for sale, the prices have always been exorbitant. Fortunately, all my working classics have doors with good latches.

Re: HP classic latches Message #5 Posted by Jonathan Eisch on 20 July 2009, 11:54 a.m., in response to message #4 by Michael de Estrada I sent my latches to someone on this list a while back, as they offered to try to fabricate some new ones for me. Don't remember what ever happened with that, but it sounds like if they got around to it, there are enough people here to make their time worth while. -Jonathan

Re: HP classic latches Message #6 Posted by Tim on 20 July 2009, 5:32 p.m., in response to message #5 by Jonathan Eisch That would be an excellent idea. They are plastic. You wouldn't think it would take much to fabricate for someone who works with plastics.

Re: HP classic latches Message #7 Posted by Randy on 20 July 2009, 6:16 p.m., in response to message #6 by Tim Quote: That would be an excellent idea. They are plastic. You wouldn't think it would take much to fabricate for someone who works with plastics. I guess you've never seen what it takes to make a molded plastic part... molds are anything but easy. To recreate those latches it would be unbelievably expensive to make in quantity. Several thousand dollars would be good starting point for the tooling since there are two molds involved, one for the slide, one for the rubber foot insert. That latch system relies on some tight tolerance molding and good material, not a good match to try on a small, limited scale. There was a guy around a couple of years ago that talked about this. He did make some knock-off classic battery shells. He sold them for a short while on eBay then promptly disappeared from sight when they stopped selling. IMO, they were pretty awful.

Re: HP classic latches Message #8 Posted by Dan W on 20 July 2009, 8:53 p.m., in response to message #7 by Randy That was Don Shaffer. I thought they were pretty good, and bought a number to build battery packs and sell on that_site with rebuilt calculators. Of course they weren't as good as the originals, but they were much better than not having a shell at all.

Re: HP classic latches Message #9 Posted by Randy on 20 July 2009, 9:08 p.m., in response to message #8 by Dan W Quote: Of course they weren't as good as the originals, but they were much better than not having a shell at all. I cannot agree with you. Never had problem one with a Mark Hoskins battery and I've bought at least thirty of them. They may not be pretty but they always work. I bought five of the other brand and I had to trim the case on two to get them to work, a third was never 100% reliable as the case was warped due to too much hot glue and never fit quite right in the calculator. Your mileage was obviously different...

Re: HP classic latches Message #10 Posted by Dan W on 20 July 2009, 10:24 p.m., in response to message #9 by Randy I can't comment on the battery packs. I only bought the plastic frames, then built up my own packs.

Re: HP classic latches Message #11 Posted by Michael de Estrada on 20 July 2009, 11:23 p.m., in response to message #10 by Dan W Don Shaffer is selling his classic battery packs again. He has changed his assembly technique from hot glue to heat staking, and they now fit properly inside the calculator. They cost more than Mark Hoskins' battery packs, and since Mark has now upgraded his packs to 1000 mAH cells, there is less reason to buy Don's anymore. Also, Mark is the only one that I know of that sells replacement battery packs for the HP Spice series.

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